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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Why I love Christmas

by Peter Olsen

I wrote this five years ago to the day,
just for myself, and no one has ever laid eyes on it until now. I guess it was just waiting for the blog to be invented:

December 26, 2008

How could someone who loved Christmas
so much as a kid grow up to resent it so completely as a grownup?
Actually, being a late bloomer in all things, I didn’t learn to
despise it until recently. Before that I didn’t hate it, I
just felt let down by it. It was depressing to me just for what it
wasn’t, anymore: full of wonder, anticipation, joy, innocence –
all the clichés – not to mention snow (even in Minnesota – thank
you Climate Change!). But now it seems to be the opposite of all
it’s purported to be and nothing better than a dark cloud of doom,
anxiety, and unmet expectations that I still cling to, feebly, in the
face of evidence to the contrary, and knowing better from experience,
after all these years. I just survived my 47th Christmas.
And I feel like hell. Mostly because I know how good it could
be. Used to be.

This year I managed to miss out on
nearly every single one of the few things that make the season what
it’s supposed to be: holiday parties. Office parties, open houses,
the gatherings where once a year you get together with the people
whose paths you cross throughout the year as a matter of course and
for once you stop and step out of your everyday hunkered-down
identity and seem to say to each other “Here we are again at the
end of another year of this game we try to get through successfully
(whatever that means) called Life but we won’t worry about that or
gift shopping or taxes tonight it’s good to see you let’s have a
drink and forget about all the rest and Cheers, I actually
like you!

Why did I miss out on every party?
Because I was trying to get the other stuff done. I was worrying
about the GIFTS. I was pulling veritable all-nighters trying to get
it all together. I happen to like giving gifts that have some
meaning for both myself and the person to whom I am giving. It
literally depresses me to think about giving something ‘gifty’ –
the bar of scented soap or candle or ornament or whatever. Even
though I know these things can be very much appreciated, it just
feels empty to me. It says nothing about our friendship or
relationship or the year that just passed or our hopes for the
future. Not that it has to do all that but I feel it MUST have
something to do with the two of US, giver and receiver, whoever we
are.

So admittedly, I put a lot of pressure
on myself which I can’t possibly live up to and never do. So why?
And why give something to someone who you don’t really know? You
can love someone, a second cousin you’ve known all your life, say,
but still not really know their taste in music or food or literature.
So what’s the point in trying to improve their life somehow with
something material? Yes it’s the thought that counts but why waste
time and money and resources (wrapping paper, Scotch tape, trees and
landfill space, air quality) for a thought? Make a toast to them
instead!

The only thing worse than giving a
meaningless gift is receiving one. Not because I am disappointed to
not get a great new ‘thing’ but because I just feelbad.
I feel bad that someone has spent a lot of effort trying to figure
out who I am and what I would like and I must be some kind of bastard
for not liking what they thought I would like and going to a lot of
trouble to find and buy and wrap it for me.

What do I love about Christmas?
I love the dead quiet of a heavy snowfall, when everything outside is
the same blue-grey color, except the Christmas lights. Everything is
diffused in the snow and the sounds are muffled, the scrapes of a
neighbor shoveling the sidewalk, the whine of someone’s tires
spinning on the ice, the thunder of the plow scraping by. I love
when such weather is barely navigable but people come out anyway
because they’re Minnesotans and they know how to get around in this
stuff and there’s so few other people on the roads anyway. And
they want to be warm with their friends. They just have to make it
over to our house and not slip on the ice on the front steps (the
glacier that salt cannot erode…) and throw their coats on the bed
and we’ll slip that mug of glogg into their hands their cheeks will
be rosy and the smiles bouncing off one another (“whew your nose is
cold on my cheek!”).

White Christmas at the Olsen house 2013

And I love that my cousin Renee told me
how much she loves that seemingly useless, generic,
could-have-been-for-anyone trinket I gave her last year, and how
useful it’s been.

The End

Not quite a Scrooge-caliber
transformation, but … Watch this and if it doesn't overwhelm you
with Christmas spirit and make you whimper like a little girl as I did, then your name must be Ebenezer. Ebenezer before this
happened: